The present invention relates to a method for allocating and serving destination calls in an elevator group comprising several elevators using destination call control. Usually, in destination call control immediate call allocation is used which means that immediately after having issued a call at a destination operation panel (DOP), the number of the allocated elevator to be boarded is indicated to the passenger. The present invention now relates to a method for allocating and serving destination calls when the calls issued to the elevator group can't be served by all elevators of the elevator group in one round trip. With the term “all” elevators, all active elevators which participate in the call allocation are indicated, i.e. all elevators which can be used for serving a destination call. The problem of allocating non-fixed destination calls and designing a corresponding service route for the elevators is called elevator dispatching problem (EDP).
Up to now, in the above situation where all elevators are not able to handle all destination calls in one round trip, the message “please wait” is indicated at the destination operation panel. This is quite frustrating for the passenger as he can't even input his destination call into the system. This can lead to a situation where passengers queue up in front of the DOP to wait for the issuing of their destination call.
It is therefore object of the present invention to handle destination calls in the above situation in a more economical way.
The invention is solved with a method according to claim 1. Preferred embodiments of the invention are subject-matter of the dependent claims.